CENTRAL to the development of an ethic for a pluralist society lies the notion of a peaceable community, one that renounces force as a means of resolving conflicts: a notion whose implications for society in general, and for medicine in particular, have been worked out most elegantly in recent times by H. Tristram Engelhardt. Recognition that a society is pluralist involves acknowledgement of the fact that individuals will be unable to agree on a set of values-on how a good life ought to be lived. Furthermore, such recognition obliges us to acknowledge that each of us will be unable to find good reasons to force our own view of the good life upon others. Having no deity in common, we shall be unable to resolve our differences by appeal to revelation, and sharing no common set of premisses, we shall be unable to do so by appeal to rational argument. Without such common ground, each of us will be obliged to accept that the views of rightness and wrongness held by others are as worthy of consideration as our own; that others have as much right to live in peace as we do; and that the resolution of our differences can only be achieved through negotiation, agreement, and compromise. A pluralist society claiming to be ruled by moral standards will be obliged to abjure force as a way of settling disputes among its members.

What sanctions can such a community call upon against someone who rejects the renunciation of force? Clearly they are not those of law or religion, for morality cannot of itself imprison or execute, curse or damn. Nor are they those of social convention or of professional mores. However, what morality can do is to demonstrate that certain kinds of actions are incompatible with continued membership in the moral community, and that those who undertake such actions reject the very fabric of the peaceable community and thereby lose all claim to such a community's protections. They become outlawed. The following example shows the power of such a sanction at work.